


Blood Red Right

by MissjuliaMiriam



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, attempted suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 03:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissjuliaMiriam/pseuds/MissjuliaMiriam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim makes very bad decisions, and Jason really does not approve.</p><p>Or, it gets bad, and then it gets better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Red Right

**Author's Note:**

> Originally for mgnemesi on Tumblr, and inspired by Pink's song Fuckin' Perfect, and its music video. IT WAS A PROMPT. I'M SORRY THAT I LIKE TORTURING TIM.

It’s quiet. Too quiet, and it has been for a while, really. No bats have been poking their noses into Jason’s business in the last while, and that’s a huge red flag. He’s aware that Bruce is dead, but it’s a surprise that Dickie hasn’t come to bother him yet. Or, for that matter, the Replacement, who Jason hasn’t even seen on the streets in the last few weeks. It’s weird. The kid is usually all up in his business.

So, Jason decides that he’s going to go bother the kid, just for a change of pace. He doesn’t really want to talk to Dick, and he really doesn’t want to show up at the Manor, because Alfred will guilt him into taking off his coat and eating things and that’ll just end badly. So he heads for the apartment that he knows the kid uses, and hopes that he’ll be there instead of at the Manor mourning with the rest.

He slips quietly in through Tim’s window, his boots thumping down on the carpet with a soft, dull sound. It’s warm in the house, and a bit steamy, and Jason can see light from under the closed bathroom door. He can’t hear water running, but he guesses that Tim is taking a bath. That seems a bit strange to him, because his Replacement is nothing if not efficient.

Jason toes out of his boots and leaves them under the window, and then goes over and knocks on the bathroom door.

“Heya, Replacement,” he calls. “What’s shakin’?”

There’s no response, and Jason frowns. Maybe the kid had fallen asleep in the bath. “Replacement?” he says, louder this time. “Timmy?” He knocks again, but there’s still no response. Jason narrows his eyes at the door, something like panic blooming. He shoves it down and knocks harder. “Tim. Tim!”

“Jas’n?” Tim’s voice is barely audible, slurred and quiet.

“Shit,” says Jason, and then tries the knob of the door. It’s locked, but that doesn’t deter him for more than a moment before he’s throwing his shoulder against the door. The frame cracks and the door is flung open, baring a brutal scene to Jason’s eyes.

Tim is lying in the bath, his head leaned back against the edge. He eyes are mostly closed, his lips parted, and he could be half-asleep. But he’s not, because one of his arms has letters carved into it in blocky writing, spelling out sometimes Jason can’t even process right now. There’s a bloody razor lying on the floor, and Tim’s other arm is hanging over the side of the tub, cuts on his fingers left from wielding the small blade. He’s bleeding profusely, the water of the bath stained pink.

“Jesus,” Jason says, and steps into the room. He leans over the side of the bath and pulls Tim out, cradling him in his arms and pulling him close. He’s only half-aware that Tim is naked. It doesn’t matter right now; all the matters is that he stop the bleeding before Tim dies.

Jason carries Tim into the almost immaculately clean bedroom and lays him down on the bed, then flounders for a first aid kit. Fortunately, Tim’s practicality is prevalent, as always, and it’s tucked within easy reach under the sink when Jason goes back into the bathroom. When he lugs it back to Tim’s room- it’s fucking heavy- and opens it, gauze and bandages are right at the top. “Thank god,” Jason breathes, and immediately places a few pieces of gauze against the wound on Tim’s arm and applies pressure with one hand, reaching with the other for bandages.

Tim is watching him dazedly, his blinks slow and languid. “Why?” he murmurs, so quietly Jason is barely sure that he heard it.

“Fuck,” says Jason. “Jesus Christ, Timmy, you can’t just- no. Okay, we’ll talk about this later.”

“Jay,” says Tim. “Please.”

“Tim, no. Not right now, okay?”

Tim frowns, just a little, and then says. “Okay.” Then he closes his eyes, and his breathing slows even more.

“God damn it, baby bird,” Jason curses, “don’t you dare give up on me.”

He pulls the gauze away and replaces it, and then wraps Tim’s arm as tightly as he can without completely cutting off circulation to his fingers. Not that much blood was getting there anyways, considering that it was all  _leaving Tim’s body_.

He puts bandaids around the smaller cuts on the fingers of Tim’s right hand, and then he sits down on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. “God,” he says, again, under his breath. “Jesus.”

Jason sits like that for a few minutes, then glances over to make sure that Tim isn’t bleeding through the bandages. He’s not, and his breathing is even, if slow. His skin is cool, but that’s normal for that amount of blood loss. Tim looks peaceful in his sleep, like there isn’t anything troubling him, even though there is. Clearly. Jason swallows and thinks back, and realizes,  _Fuck_. Tim had carved the word  _perfect_  into his own skin with a razor. There was no telling if it would scar, but if it did, Tim would have to live with that forever. That seems- unfair, to Jason.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath, trying to master his fear and his frustration, and his anger. It had been a long time since he’d been angry like this. Anger had become something dirty, something violent, but this isn’t. This is clean, born of panic and hopelessness. It’s strange, but it’s enough to give him some momentum, to drive him up off of the bed and into the bathroom. He has to take a moment once he steps inside, but then he sets about cleaning up, draining the water, grabbing a washcloth and wiping the blood off the the rim of the tub, and then giving the floor a cursory wipe. Everything else will have to wait; he doesn’t want to leave Tim alone for too long.

 

Tim doesn’t wake for a few hours, and even then, he’s bleary. He’s not really awake enough to get anything across to Jason, so Jason just gives him water and tells him to go back to sleep. Jason goes back to his silent vigil. Somehow, it’s one of the hardest things he’s ever done.

“-son? Jason, why are you still here?”

“Muh?” Jason rises from sleep, slowly becoming aware that he’s sprawled in an awkward, slumped position across someone’s legs. Then the memories of what had happened return, and he jolts upright. Tim is sitting with his back against the headboard, and Jason has fallen asleep slumped sideways next to him. When Tim sat up, Jason’s weight had fallen across Tim’s thighs. “Shit.”

“Hey,” says Tim, his face pale. There’s a pinch of stress between his eyebrows and at the sides of his eyes. “Why are you still here?”

“Jesus Christ, Timmy,” Jason says. “You think I’d fucking leave? After finding you like that? Shit, baby bird, I know what attempted suicide looks like.”

“That wasn’t… It wasn’t that.” Tim looks down, and Jason glares.

“Then what the fuck was it?”

“I needed, um, a reminder.” Tim glances at his bandaged arm, and Jason follows him gaze.

“That’s bullshit,” says Jason, and Tim flinches. “You don’t- you’re already perfect, kid, Christ. Why would you want to carve it into your skin?”

“But I’m not,” Tim says. It sounds like he’s begging. “I’m not. Jason, you should just go, okay? I’m not going to hurt myself. Um, more. I’m not going to hurt myself more.”

“Right,” Jason snorts, and it almost catches in his throat. “I’m not leaving, Tim.”

“Jason,” says Tim, and he look back up to meet Jason’s eyes. “I’ll be okay. You can go.”

“Uh,” says Jason. “How about no.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Nope.”

“Yes.”

“Nada. Nah. No.”

“Jason!”

Jason smiles. “You know how stubborn I am. I’ve managed to sustain a fight with the god damned Batman for years, baby bird. I ain’t leaving until I’m sure that you’re gonna be 100% okay without me.”

“I will be okay,” Tim insists. His hands clench in the blankets, and he glares. “Maybe not a 100 percent, but can you blame me? Everyone I love is-” He chokes a little, and then continues through it. “Gone. They’re all gone, Jason, and Dick fired me in favour of the demon brat, and I don’t think Bruce is actually dead. I have to find him, I just… wasn’t ready.”

Jason stares. “Tim…”

“I’m not crazy!” Tim nearly shouts the words, and Jason thinks that maybe this is a fight that he’s had with Dick as well.

“I know, I wasn’t going to say that. I was just going to say that I’m not sure how carving letters into your forearm will make you more ready to try to find the big bad bat.” Jason reaches out tentatively and lays his hand on Tim’s leg through the blankets. The muscles tense for a moment, and then Tim relaxes.

“I needed a reminder,” Tim says, quietly. “That I’m not perfect. That I can’t do everything, and that I’m… poisonous. I kill everyone that gets close to me, or else they leave me, and because of that I have to be perfect. I can’t afford to be anything else, and I needed a reminder that came from the same kind of pain that could result if I slip.”

Jason thinks,  _That’s awful_. He says, “That’s bullshit. Fucking bullshit, you got me? Any time you need help, you fucking call me, okay? You are as perfect as you could possibly get, and I don’t want to hear you talking shit about yourself.”

“Jason, I’m not perfect, I-”

Jason reaches out and snares the back of Tim’s beck, pulls him forward and leaning in until their foreheads are nearly touching. “You. Are. Perfect. Got it? Or am I gonna need to say it again?”

Tim shakes his head, his breath shuddering across Jason’s face. This is almost a lover’s touch, Jason knows, but he doesn’t give a flying fuck right about now. “Good,” he says, and then leans back, but he doesn’t release Tim’s neck. Instead, he slides up the bed until he can keep his grasp on Tim’s scruff easily, without any discomfort.

“I’m going to stay until you’re better,” Jason says. He’s not sure when he decided any of this, but he might as well tell Tim. Fair warning, and all that. “And then we’re gonna go find B together, okay? I don’t want you to be alone.”

Tim stares at Jason as if he’s just revealed himself to be some kind of alien (and not the easy-going, Kryptonian kind, either), and then nods slowly. “Okay,” he says. It’s an agreement for neither of them to be alone until both of them are ready, and that’s how it starts.

Later they agree never to let it end, until death do them part.


End file.
